1. ALSO BY WAYNE CHASE Roedy Blacks Complete Guitar Chord
Poster Roedy Blacks Complete Keyboard Chord Poster Roedy Blacks
Guitar & Keyboard Scales Poster Roedy Blacks Musical
Instruments Poster Roedy Blacks Chord Progression Chart The Gold
Standard Song List
2. The Essential Handbook for Songwriters, Performers, and
Music Students SECOND EDITION Wayne Chase Roedy Black Publishing
Inc. Vancouver, BC, Canada Blaine, WA, USA
3. Copyright 2006 by Roedy Black Publishing Inc. All rights
reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval
system without written permission from the publisher, except for
the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. How Music REALLY
Works! is a serious critical study of popular songwriting technique
as exemplified by various songwriters. Brief quotations of lyrics
are intended to illustrate or explicate the critical argument and
information presented by the author of How Music REALLY Works! and
thus constitute fair use under existing copyright conventions.
Cover illustration 2003 by Irene Ha. Chase, Wayne O. How music
really works: the essential handbook for songwriters, performers,
and music students / Wayne Chase.2nd ed. Includes bibliographical
references and index. ISBN 1-897311-55-9 (trade paperback) ISBN
1-897311-56-7 (PDF) The moral rights of the author have been
asserted. Published by Roedy Black Publishing Inc. 46800 - Unit D,
2405 Pine Street Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6J 5G6
604-228-8444 604-228-8424 fax [email protected]
www.RoedyBlack.com Printed in Canada. Visit this books websites:
www.HowMusicReallyWorks.com www.GoldStandardSongList.com
www.CompleteChords.com www.MooseNobel.com
4. TO ANNA
5. CONTENTS PART I THE BIG PICTURE Introduction: Yes, You
Create Compelling, Emotionally Powerful Music and Lyrics ... You
Know What Youre Doing 3 Intro.1 Music Notation? Not Here! . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Intro.2 An Essential Skill Songwriters and Performers Lack . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Intro.3 Technique First, Then Emotional
Abandon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Intro.4 What
You Need to Know to Understand Everything in This Book . . . . . 8
Intro.5 The Territory Ahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 1 What Music REALLY Is, Who
Makes It, Where, When, Why 11 1.1 What Is Music? . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . 12 1.2 Who Makes Music? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.3 Where Does Music
Come From? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . 16 1.4 When Did Music Get Started? . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 1.5 Why Is There
Such a Thing as Music? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . 71 2 What the Popular Music Industry REALLY Is, and
Where It Came From 101 2.1 Origin of Popular Music as an Industry .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 2.2 African
American Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . 104 2.3 Your Musical Roots: How the Major Genres
Emerged . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 2.4 Why Theres No Such
Thing as Progress In the Arts, Including Music . 111 2.5 Musical
Genres as Cultural Infrastructures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . 117 2.6 A Brief Look at the Major Genres of Western
Popular Music . . . . . . . . . . 120
11. Acknowledgments Its my pleasure to thank all those who
inspired and helped me to convert a somewhat fragmented web-based
First Edition of How Music REALLY Works! into this extended
hard-copy Second Edition. The loving encouragement of my wife Anna
Hudson, who made countless valuable comments on all chapters, kept
me believing, contrary to the evidence, that the dang book would
get done eventually, even as the months turned into years ... more
than four years. Id also like to thank Doug Chase, Margaret Chase,
Rose Blower, and Len Blower for their help on this project. The
cheerfulness and enthusiasm of my friend John Swift buoyed me as I
struggled to keep the book from getting totally out of hand. Other
friends who contributedin variousways include Doug Eakins, Tim
McDaniels, Bill Allman, and John McLaughlan. A number of musicians
reviewed various chapters and made many helpful suggestions:
Stephen Digger Souza, Gary Talley, Rod Copes, Alan McCann, Craig
Pinegar, David Kreller, Evan Bowen, David James, John Bercik, David
Thwaite, Peter Block, Robert Curtis, and Simon Williams. I am
grateful to IreneHaforherbrilliantwatercolourcover
illustration,andtoFiona Raven forcover layout. To those I have
forgotten to thank, I offer apologies. Please see Section 7.2 on
memory and its limitations.
12. Advisory/Disclaimer This book provides information
primarily on the art and craft of songwriting, and secondarily on
marketing and promoting popular music. It is sold with the
understanding that the publisher and author are not engaged in
rendering legal or other professional services. If you require
legal and other expert assistance, you should seek the services of
a competent professional. Since this book is but one of many on the
subject, you are urged to survey as much material as you can about
writing and marketing your songs, recordings, and live act, and
tailor the information to your individual needs. Appendix 2 lists
some resources you may find useful. Every effort has been made to
make this book as accurate as possible. However, there may be
mistakes, both typographical and in content. Therefore, this text
should be used only as a general guide and not as the ultimate
source of songwriting and marketing information. Furthermore, this
book contains information that is current only up to the printing
date. Thepurposeof thisbookis to educateand entertain. The
authorandRoedyBlack Publishing Inc. shall have neither liability
nor responsibility to any person or entity with respect to any loss
or damage caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or
indirectly, by the information contained in this book.
13. PART I THE BIG PICTURE
14. Introduction Yes, You Create Compelling, Emotionally
Powerful Music and Lyrics... You Know What Youre Doing Making music
should not be left to the professionals. MICHELLE SHOCKED INTRO.1
MUSIC NOTATION? NOT HERE! Most musicians play by ear. Suppose you
play by ear. What use would you have for a book on musical
technique full of examples in the form of music notation? Doesnt
make sense. Other ways of explaining music work just as
effectively. Or even better. Fluency in music, like fluency in
language, does not require the ability to read or write. So, How
Music REALLY Works! has no music notation.
15. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!4 FIGURE 1FIGURE 1FIGURE 1FIGURE 1 A
Music-Notation-FreeA Music-Notation-FreeA Music-Notation-FreeA
Music-Notation-Free ZoneZoneZoneZone In case somebodyhasever
advised you that learning how to read and writemusic notation will
make you a better songwriter or performer, here are just a few of
the many songwriters who did alright without notation skills:
Irving Berlin Johnny Cash Errol Garner Jimi Hendrix Robert Johnson
John Lennon Paul McCartney Muddy Waters Brian Wilson Stevie Wonder
And some non-songwriters ... performers who managed to play and
sing their way to glory without knowing how to read or write music:
Louis Armstrong Bix Beiderbeck Dave Brubeck Glen Campbell Bing
Crosby Judy Garland Kate Smith Luciano Pavarotti Elvis Presley
Django Reinhardt Buddy Rich Frank Sinatra Ella Fitzgerald Chet
Baker Musical skill is normal in the human species. Not a rare
talent. Most people have the potential to sing and to play an
instrument with reasonable competence, even if theyve never tried.
Even if theyve tried and failed (usually due to inept instruction).
Ability to read or write music notation has nothing to do with it.
Same with songwriting. Contrary to common belief, its not a special
gift. Anybody can write a song. Even a five-year-old child. But
hardly anybody has one vital skill required to create brilliant,
classic songs.
16. INTRODUCTION 5 INTRO.2 AN ESSENTIAL SKILL SONGWRITERS AND
PERFORMERS LACK The main part of this book focuses on techniques
you can use to create accessible, memorable, emotionally powerful
music and lyrics. The biological connection between music and
emotion in the human species goes back hundreds of thousands of
years, as youll see in Chapters 1 and 9. Music evolved as an
emotional communication system. And 99.9% of songwriters have no
idea how it works or how to exploit it. Its the essential skill
they most need, and most lack. Thats why, for example, the
companion to this book, the Gold Standard Song List
(GoldStandardSongList.com) has only 5,000 songs on it (from a full
100 years of songwriting), instead of 5,000,000 or 500,000,000
songs. You have but one instrument at your disposal that you can
use to create emotionally powerful music: the 100,000-year-old
neural organ inside your skull. If you dont understand how it works
musically, you have no advantage over a million other aspiring
songwriters and performers. If you dont know how to manipulate
certain elements of music and lyrics to evoke emotion, you will
fail in the marketplace as a songwriter and as a performer of your
original songs. Potential audiences do not want to hear emotionally
anaemic songs, no matter how well performed. Technology will not
save you. All the digital hardware and software in the world cant
come remotely close to emulating what your brain can do when it
comes to creating emotionally evocative music and lyrics. In short,
if you want to break away from the masses of struggling musicians,
you have to learn how to use your brains evolved musical and
linguistic modules to create accessible, memorable, emotionally
powerful music and lyrics. INTRO.3 TECHNIQUE FIRST, THEN EMOTIONAL
ABANDON First, you need to learn the technical elements covered in
this book. Learn the skills Lennon and McCartney spent years
acquiring before they ever wrote a song. They didnt read music, but
by the time they started recording original songs, they had
absorbed an awful lot of technical stuff about music. Their
technical knowledge did not come to them magically. Growing up in
Liverpool in the 1940s and early 1950s, Lennon and McCartney
absorbed a good deal of their musical know-how from the classic
songs of great masters such as the Gershwinbrothers,Noel
Coward,ColePorter,andIrvingBerlin.McCartneylearned
17. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!6 much about how music works from
his father, a proficient amateur pianist who also played trumpet in
a jazz band. Additionally, the lads devoured the best of American
country, folk, and blues, thanks to young Liverpool sailors who
brought home the latest records. Lennon and McCartney met in 1957,
a couple of years after rock n roll (as it was known then) had
become an international phenomenon. An early poster of Lennons
pre-Beatles band, The Quarry Men, advertises the bands repertoire
in this order: Country Western Rock n Roll Skiffle In the years
before getting signed to a label, The Beatles played hundreds of
gigs in England and Germanycovers of now classic songs. Once
signed, they recorded covers of early rock n roll tunes such as
Long Tall Sally, Roll Over Beethoven, and Matchbox. They also
covered some decidedly non-rock material such as A Taste of Honey
and Meredith Willsons 1957 Broadway show tune, Till There Was You,
from The Music Man. Learning all those coverseverything from
wartime dance hall tunes to American rockabilly and bluesand
playing them over and over and over instilled in Lennon and
McCartney a deep understanding and feel for the way great
songwriters meld technical and psychological elements to create
memorable songs. Any intelligent songwriter who learns how to do
this (one way or another, not necessarily the way Lennon and
McCartney mastered it), and applies it in his or her own original
creative style, can compose brilliant songs consistently.
Songwriters who do not learn how to do this (the vast majority)
turn out mediocre material. As you go through this book, dont focus
on rote-memorization of details. Just take in the major concepts
(more on this in a minute). After a while, the most
importanttechniques,summarizedattheendsofChapters 6through 11, will
become second nature to you. Habitual. Once youve mastered the
technical stuff, then write with unpremeditated emotional abandon.
Without thinking about whether your methods are technically
correct. Its like learning and applying any skill. Riding a bike or
a horse. First you nail the technique, then you take off and
explore. (Even when youve become highly skilled, youll find
yourself editing and revising initial drafts to make each musical
and lyrical component as powerful and memorable as possible.) WHY
THIS BOOK IS A CLASSIC WESTERN (AND WHYWHY THIS BOOK IS A CLASSIC
WESTERN (AND WHYWHY THIS BOOK IS A CLASSIC WESTERN (AND WHYWHY THIS
BOOK IS A CLASSIC WESTERN (AND WHY YOU WILL NEED A HORSE)YOU WILL
NEED A HORSE)YOU WILL NEED A HORSE)YOU WILL NEED A HORSE) In
Chapter 2, youll learn why music does not progress the way science
and technology progress. Instead, artists, including songwriters
and performers, aim to create classics. (Artists who dont aspire to
create classics are hacks.)
18. INTRODUCTION 7 The popular songs of English-speaking
nations of the West serve as this books reference base for examples
and illustrations. Especially the 5,000 classic songs of Western
popular music youll find at www.GoldStandardSongList.com. Classic
songs by Western songwriters such as Bob Dylan, 2Pac, The Beatles,
Hank Williams, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Ferron, the Gershwin
brothers, James Brown, Wu-Tang Clan, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Bob
Marley, Duke Ellington, the McGarrigle sisters, Tom Waits, and a
thousand others. , then, is a Classic Western. That means, to get
the most from this book, you will need a horse. If you dont already
have one, Sadie and Ellie Sue over at the Dodge City Horse Store
can probably fix you up. If they dont have one to your liking, two
stagecoaches leave Dodge every morning, one eastbound to Wichita
and the other southbound to Amarillo. Good horse stores in both
towns. If you need a drink (and you probably will because youll
find some bits of this book as dull as a lecture on the geology of
gravel), ride on over to the Wrong Ranch Saloon. Ms Puma owns the
place and pours the Jack Daniels. She has a heart of gold because,
in accordance with her lifes role as a cliche in a Classic Western,
she used to be a prostitute but has changed her ways. These days,
as she tends bar at the Wrong Ranch, Ms Puma has a lot of
interesting things to say on all kinds of topics, such as
intelligent design and particle physics. For instance, she can
explain to you in plain English why it is that, as quarks and
gluons get closer together, the forces between them get weaker and
weaker. Which, as folks in these parts realize, simply defies
common sense. If you have a problem with horse stealers or other
nasties, get hold of Marshal McDillon. Youll most likely find him
over at the Wrong Ranch Saloon, visiting with Ms Puma a lot. If you
cant find the Marshal, look for Deputy Fester, who hangs around
Sadie and Ellie Sues horse store. Which is ironic, considering
Deputy Fester cant ride a horse to save his pathetic soul. If you
have a medical problem, Doc Yada-Yadams might be able to treat you.
If hes sober. Which is seldom. But without him, this Classic
Western would lack another important cliche, the town drunk.
19. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!8 INTRO.4 WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO
UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING IN THIS BOOK In short, not much. Heres a
list: How to count to 32 (well, maybe all the way up to 64). How to
locate and play the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G on a piano or
guitar or other instrument. Roman numerals from I up to VII. The
meaning of simple ratios, such as 2:1", as in At the Wrong Ranch
Saloon, Moosehead beer outsells Diet Coke 2:1. How to find,
explore, and exploit the Gold Standard Song List (hint: its at
www.GoldStandardSongList.com). What songs to play on your mouth
organ for your horse as you ride along in the Deep Purple of
Twilight Time through the Blue Shadows on the Trail. The farther
you travel, the more you will need to get acquainted with the Gold
Standard Song List and the instructions at that website on how to
listen to free, legal excerpts of songs, and how to get the lyrics
for any of the songs. INTRO.5 THE TERRITORY AHEAD All songs spring
from songwriters information-processing brains. Great songwriters
reveal in their songs (both music and lyrics) an intuitive
understanding of the evolutionary biology of music. Thats the
subject of Chapter 1. Songs become timeless classics if they tap
into shared human universals, aspects of evolved behaviour that
have not changed in tens or hundreds of thousands of years. As you
go through this book, youll learn how to apply insights about how
your brain works in the process of creating and performing your
songs. And how your listeners brains work when they hear your
songs. Is it tough to learn? In a word, nah. It aint rocket
science.
20. INTRODUCTION 9 Heres the thing. You cant separate biology
from the arts. That includes music. The human brains built-in
receptors for patterns and sequences become activated at several
levels when the brain sensespatterns in melodies and chords and
rhythm and lyrics. How Music REALLY Works! shows you how to exploit
your brains adaptation for music in your songwriting and performing
technique. Youll probablywritemuch bettersongs,memorable,powerful
songs, once yougain an understanding of how the brain processes
music and lyrics, and the emotional connections it makes. (Youll
perform better, too). That does not mean you have to memorize all
the technical details in this book. Instead, you only need to
understand the essence of what youre reading. You can go through
the material at whatever pace youre comfortable with. No need to
rush. Your brain will retain the gist of the material that
interests you, the stuff you find yourself having fun
withespecially the territory thats new for you. When youre done, of
course youll need to look up specific details from time to time to
refresh your memory. But you dont need to memorize lengthy passages
to acquire useful information. Theoft-quotedphilosopher,Huckleberry
Finn,bestsumsup whereyoureheaded in the following pages, and why: I
reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest
because Aunt Sally shes going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I
cant stand it. I been there before. DONT TAKE YOUR GUNS TO TOWNDONT
TAKE YOUR GUNS TO TOWNDONT TAKE YOUR GUNS TO TOWNDONT TAKE YOUR
GUNS TO TOWN Before you get going, heres some friendly advice from
Deputy Fester: dont take your guns to town. Hes referring to an
incident that happened at the Wrong Ranch Saloon on the main street
of Dodge some years ago. Deputy Fester told the whole story to an
admiring reporter from the Dodge City Musical Saw Weekly in an
interview at the Wrong Ranch. See that dusty cowpoke on the
barstool yonder? Watch what you say around him. Hell try to laugh
you down. Hes the dude Billy Joes ma warned Billy Joe about in the
Johnny Cash song, Dont Take Your Guns To Town. She warned Billy Joe
quite a few times in the chorus. Leave your guns at home, Bill, she
said. Dont take your guns to town. But did he listen to his ma?
Noooooo.
21. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!10 Heres the story. Billy Joe straps
on his guns and tells his ma hes a man, and gets on his horse and
he rides into Dodge. He hitches his horse outside the Wrong Ranch
and strides in like he owns the place and orders a double Jack
Daniels and Ms Puma serves it up. Which Billy Joe knocks back too
fast, and starts coughing like an idiot. So the dusty cowpoke over
there starts laughing him down. Next thing you know, they get into
that famous gunfight, and the cowpoke plugs Billy Joe real good,
because thats how the song goes. We planted Billy Joe up on Boot
Hill. That part isnt in the song, but we had to do something. You
cant just leave a body shot full of holes to rot on a saloon floor.
It would stink like a sack of rotten eggs in a day or two. Ms Puma
would lose her license pretty quick. We couldnt even report the
shootout to Marshal McDillon, because thats not in the song either,
and Johnny Cash wouldnt let us change the lyrics. He told us he
already shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, in one of his
songs, and he didnt take kindly to strangers messing with his plot
lines. Especially in a song where a dude gets shot. Bad karma,
Johnny Cash said. So the dusty cowpoke never even got arrested. So
thats why I advise everybody who reads this book to please leave
your guns at home. You never know what sort of dangerous characters
and ideas you might come across, itching to pick a fight. Thank
you.
22. 1 What Music REALLY Is, Who Makes It, Where, When, Why
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is
not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not
music. Music is the best. FRANK ZAPPA 1.0.1 PIQUING THE POLARIZED
Chapter 1 addresses these five basic questions about music: 1. WHAT
is music? 2. WHO makes music? 3. WHERE does music come from? 4.
WHEN did music get started? 5. WHY is there such a thing as music?
Theotherquestion,HOWdoes one goaboutcreatingmusicworthlisteningto?
takes nine chapters to answerChapters 3 through 11, the main part
of the book. Tackling the five Ws of the phenomenon of music
necessitates delving into Darwinian natural selection and sexual
selection. Ifyou have a strong religiousfaith,
23. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!12 you may find bits of Chapter 1
offensive because of all the evolution stuff. On the other hand, if
you have a strong atheistic belief, Chapter 1 may offend you, too,
because it does not advocate for atheism. If you already know all
about natural selection and sexual selection and brain modularity,
then Chapter 1 might simply bore you. If so, why not grab a bag of
chips and ride on ahead to Chapter 2, which discusses the rise of
the Western popular music industry and its various genres.
OrChapters 3through 11, the sections on how to create memorable,
emotionally powerful music and lyrics. 1.1 What Is Music? 1.1.1
BIOLOGICAL, NOT MYSTICAL Music has played a central role in human
existence for hundreds of thousands of years. So...what is music?
According to the evidence, its probably an adaptationalthough some
researchers argue music is a byproduct of other adaptations. Whats
an adaptation? It's a biological trait that evolved to promote
survival or reproductive success. A tigers fangs. A peacocks fan.A
mosquitos ability todraw blood and escape into the night, just as
youre trying to get to sleep. As a human, you possess
manyformidableadaptations, such as bipedalism (two- legged
walking), language, and a lot of other inborn skills that your
fellow primates do not have. (Unlike horses, all primates several
hundred specieshave highly flexible 5-fingered hands, opposable
digits, and sharp eyesight. Some, such as monkeys, apes, and
humans, also have relatively large brains.) Before biologists
confer adaptation status upon a human trait, in a solemn ceremony
at Stonehenge under a full moon, said trait must fulfil several
criteria, among them: Humans in all present-day cultures must use
the adaptation.
24. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 13 Evidence from history and anthropology must indicate the
adaptations existence in ancient cultures. Evidence from
palaeontology must indicate the adaptations existence to some
degree in extinct hominid speciesthat is, in other species of
bipedal human-like primates, all now extinct. All of the above
apply to language and bipedalism. They also apply to music. Every
human culture ever known has had music. Even societies that do not
have well-developed visual arts show sophisticated musical
development. Today, practically all normal adult human beings: Can
and do sing to some degree (Pop Idol/American Idol contestants
notwithstanding), even if only in the privacy of an elevator or on
the back of a horse in the hills south of Tulsa. Can and do tap at
least one foot to a tune, once in a while (an important
qualification as youll see in a minute). Listen
toself-chosenmusic,purchase music,andotherwiseshowappreciation for
music at some level. (I couldve played guitar like Jimi, but I
chose to go into accounting instead, to meet more women.) 1.2 Who
Makes Music? 1.2.1 HOOTIN AND HOWLIN: HOW ANIMAL SOUNDS DIFFER FROM
OTHER SOUNDS IN NATURE In nature, when you listen to the wind in
the trees or water rushing in a stream, what do you hear? Random
and diffuse background sound. Like traffic in the city. A wide
range of frequencies all mixed together. (Frequency just means
number of vibrations per second. A given frequency number
corresponds to a particular tone or note, such as A-440, the A
above Middle C. More on this in Chapter 3.)
25. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!14 Animals evolved ways of
signalling each other using calls that focus on narrow bands of
frequencies. Energy concentrated in this way results in sounds that
carry long distances. You can hear the hootin and howlin easily
against the random background sound. Species also evolve sounds
specific to their own kind, so that they can identify each other.
In a tropical rainforest, for example, a small area of, say, one
square kilometre may contain scores of different bird species. Each
species has evolved a signature sound, a distinctive song or
repertoire of songs. (More on developing a signature sound in
Chapter 11.) 1.2.2 HOOTIN AND HOWLIN: INSTINCTIVE VS LEARNED
Studyingvocalizationsofnon-human animals provides somecluesabouthow
music originated in humans. For instance, some animals use
vocalizations to signal alarm, some to signal discovery of a food
source. All birds with complex songs learn their songs from each
other. But they dont learn just any old tunesthey learn
species-specific songs only. And, once learned, their songs change
little. The fact that they learn songs at all, though, makes birds
musically akin to humans, whales, and dolphins. (But that does not
mean humans became musical by imitating birds!) Oddly, some of our
closest primate relatives, monkeys and chimpanzees, do not learn
their vocalizations from each other. Theyre born with an
instinctive and limited repertoire of grunts and calls. Chimpanzees
have about 30 calls. Even the charming vocal duetting of gibbons is
not learned; its innate. Animal calls and songs normally
communicate an emotional state. So its possible that the musical
vocalizations that humans evolved did not co-evolve with language,
since language communicates mostly information. Human music may
havepredated human language, but its highly unlikely that language
evolved before music. 1.2.3 HUMAN SOUNDMAKING: DISCRETE PITCHES (NO
MORE HOOTIN AND HOWLIN) Non-humanprimatevocalization takestheform
ofunpitchedgruntsandcalls,rather than discrete pitches. Your human
brain does not respond happily to continuously
26. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 15 sliding hootin and howlin when presented in musical or
speech contexts. It gets confused. Unlike all other animals, humans
evolved a vocal communication system that uses mainly discrete
pitches. You can hear it in both speech and music. Thats why the
melodies of songs found in all musical traditions follow scales,
groups of discrete pitches (the subject of Chapter 4). 1.2.4 HUMAN
SOUNDMAKING: ENTRAINMENT (THATS EN-TRAIN-MENT, NOT ENTERTAINMENT)
Humans entrain to isometric beats. To entrain(from the same root as
train, referring to being dragged or carried along) means to join
in and synchronize to a rhythmic source outside the bodyto play,
clap, tap, sing along. Or, as a musician would put it, to lock in
with the band. Isometric refers to steady, evenly-spaced regular
beats. The ability to entrain rhythmically to an external beatvital
in both music and dancehas evolved only in humans. No other animal
can do it. Selective pressure for teamwork and group coordination
may have triggered the evolution of the rhythmic entrainment
function in humans. (Selective pressure refers to the environmental
demandsincluding conditions in the social environmentthat favour
the Darwinian evolution of physical and mental traits over a long
period of time. In short, selective pressure drives Darwinian
evolution. For example, selective pressure for group bonding may
have driven, among many other social behaviours, the evolution of
the human ability to harmonize, or blend discrete pitchesa skill
unique to humans.) The innate ability to entrain means people can
participate in a musical performance without knowing how to play a
musical instrumentclapping along, noddingtothebeat,and, of course,
dancing.A few animals can chorus in synchrony, such as frogs and
crickets. But only humans can vary the tempo (number of beats per
minute) from slow to several times faster, without losing the sense
of synchronous timing. Only humans have the ability to play musical
instruments. Non-human primates cannot keep a steady beat or learn
new melodic sequencing. Thats why theyre incapable of playing the
most basic of instruments, and cannot be trained to learn even the
simplest human music (although they can learn simple human
language).
27. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!16 Every human culture ever known
has had music. We humans take for granted
oureffortlessdiscrete-pitchvocalizingandisometrictime-keepingskills.Non-human
animals have no such abilities, and consequently no true
appreciation of bluegrass, ABBA, or hip-hop. Except for certain
breeds of dogs who join in when they hear particular songs from
musical theatre and R & B. 1.3 Where Does Music Come From?
1.3.1 NOT OUT OF THIN AIR: MUSIC COMES FROM EVOLVED BRAIN MODULES
Some people believe music comes wafting magically out of thin air
in the form of mysterious, disembodied inspiration. It then
presumably lodges in the skull of the composer or songwriter, who
feverishly jots it down or records it on a tiny digital device, and
later claims, It just came to me in a flash. I wrote the whole song
in 23 seconds. Thats where music seems to come from. But the
musical inspiration you enjoy actually comes to you courtesy of the
parallel processing that goes on in certain integrated modules
within the fascinating neuro-computational organ located inside
your head. Your brain processes music and also creates music. So,
whats a module? Its a network of brain cells, a brain structure,
that has evolved to carry out some specialized function. The
Canadian cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in Howthe Mind
Works, describes the mind as what the brain does, or, more
specifically, ...not a single organ but a system of organs, which
we can think of as psychological faculties or mental modules.
Evidence from cognitive science, neuroscience, evolutionary
biology, evolutionary psychology, and other disciplines points to
the existence of numerous such brain structures. Possibly hundreds
of them. A mental toolbox that enables you to survive and replicate
your genes in your offspring.
28. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 17 Consider your bodys architecture. You have many physical
body parts, external and internalhands, feet, lungs, heart, etc.
You can easily identify numerous sub- parts as well: each of your
hands has fingers, fingernails, knuckles, a thumb, palm, muscles,
ligaments. Every normal human is born with these physical internal
and external body parts. The same applies to your brains
architecture. Even though you cant see your brains modules, theyre
as real, and as different from each other, as your hands and your
liver. And, like the rest of your body parts, you have these brain
structures at birth. All otherhumans on the planet are born with
the same brain modules as you, just as theyre born with the same
internal and external body parts that make all of us
identifiablyhuman. And that means, as discussed laterin this
chapter, humans show remarkable similarities in behaviour in every
culture globally. Brain modules or faculties vary slightly from
individual to individual, just as other body parts do. The feet you
were born with, for example, have the same basic structure and
anatomy as everybody elses feet. While easily identifiable as feet,
your feet vary slightly from everyone elses; theyre identifiably
yours. Same with the mental faculties or modules you were born
with. While each one performs the same specialized function in
every human brain, your modules vary slightly from everyone elses.
But, like your feet, your mental modules still perform in a
recognizably human way. Thats why human culture shows so much
similarity everywhere in the world. And that includes musical
similarity, discussed in more detail later in this chapter.
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCESMULTIPLE INTELLIGENCESMULTIPLE
INTELLIGENCESMULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES What exactly is intelligence?
Usually, its defined as the ability to understand, reason, and
solve problems. So IQ tests focus on logical and verbal abilities.
However, according to the theory of multiple intelligences
(controversial, but nonetheless intriguing because it jibes with
evidence that the mind has evolved as a complex modular system),
humans have other kinds of intelligenceinterpersonal intelligence,
kinesthetic intelligence, visual intelligence, and so on. One of
these is musical intelligence. Most people excel at only one or two
kinds of intelligence. For instance, if youre gifted as a musician,
and also have an outstanding ability to empathize, then you might
have
29. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!18 exceptional potential for writing
songsand yet score only average on a standard IQ test. 1.3.2 YOU
WERE BORN WITH A PERSONALITY The genetic code to build a head full
of specialized modules evolved in response to selective pressure
over millions of years. Being born with music-acquisition,
language-acquisition and other skills and abilities already wired
in your brain means you were born with a basic personality. You
inherited it from your parents. But the personality you had at
birth differed substantially from the personalities of your
parents. Your modular brain structures are not completely
developed, connected, and constructed at birth. Thats why it takes
some time before you can talk and sing. The same applies to other
aspects of your development. It takes several years before your
permanent teeth come in. If youre female, you dont begin to develop
breasts until puberty. If youre male, you dont grow facial hair
until then. Nevertheless, at birth, you have the brain wiring in
place for all this to happen. Fromchildhoodon,thesurroundingculture
shapesthepersonalityyouwereborn with,butdoes notreplaceit.
Thepersonalityyou havetodayowesits characterpartly to your genetic
inheritance (perhaps half), and partly to your personal environment
(perhaps half)especially your peer group. (NOTE: This does not mean
that your genetic inheritance causes 50% of your personality and
your peer group causes the other 50%. Instead, it refers to
observed variance inmeasuresofpersonality and behaviourdue to
diversityamong individuals in all kinds of areas related to
upbringing, such as education, religion, leisure activities, and so
on.) Genetic inheritanceinfluences everyones
behaviourtoday,asitalwayshas.That is, no matter how enculturated we
humans think weve become, we have not by any means outgrown our
genes! 1.3.3 MODULES AINT COMPUTERS Atbirth,yourbrain
cameequippedwithnumerouspre-wired adaptationsprecisely the opposite
of a blankslate (moreon this a bit later). Your brain does not
function like a general-purpose computer with a single processor.
As an example of the
30. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 19 inborn modular nature of the brain, consider the brain
circuitry for modelling objects visually. It exists in the brains
of all people at birtheven people born blind. That is, some people
blind from birth can accurately draw objects in proper 3-D visual
perspective, a skill they could not possibly learn from the
surrounding culture. For example, a Turkish artist named Esref
Armagan, who has been blind since birth, can paint realistic
compositions of things he has never seen, with accurate three-point
perspective and scale size. Your brains modular architecture does
not resemble conventional computer design. Pinker again: The word
module brings to mind detachable snap-in components, and that is
misleading. Mental modules are not likely to be visible to the
naked eye as circumscribed territories on the surface of the brain,
like the flank steak and rump roast on the supermarket cow display.
A mental module probably looks more like roadkill, sprawling
messily over the bulges and crevasses of the brain. Or it may be
broken into regions that are interconnected by fibers that make the
regions act as a unit...the metaphor of the mental module is a bit
clumsy; a better one is Noam Chomskys mental organ. If you own an
ordinary desktop or notebook computer, its a serial computer that
mimics a parallel computer. Unlike your brain, a computer processor
executes only one instruction at a time. But it does its work so
fast that it usually fools you into thinking its doing several
things at once. Thats not how your brain works. Brain structures
tend to evolve as specializations for various tasks, such as
detecting danger, recognizing faces, protecting kin,
mating,predictingthebehaviourofothers,andplayingtheharmonica for
your horse. Taken together, your brains constituent modules do not
function like a conventional computer. Nor like computer software.
Nor like a mechanical clock. Rather, they connect up in vastly
complex networks of neurons that communicate with each other and
vie for your attention. Your brain is a massively parallel neural
organ of computation, not a serial one. That is, unlike a small
conventional human- made computer, your small conventional human
brain processes information and interpretations using many
different modules simultaneously. Thats why you can drive your car,
drink coffee, talk on your cell phone, and run over a pedestrian,
all at the same time. Try programming a computer to do that! 1.3.4
EVIDENCE FOR BRAIN MODULARITY Where does the evidence of brain
modularity come from?
31. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!20 Studies of patients who have
experienced brain lesions (structural changes in the brain) due to
injury or disease reveal brain modularity. Many patients exhibit
the same behavioural changes or deficits after suffering a brain
lesion that occurs in the same physical area of the brain, often
due to a stroke. Observations of the effects of injuries and
diseases occurring in different parts ofthebrain havedisclosed a
number of modules. Another source is measurement and observation of
brain activity using positron emission tomography (PET) and
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These techniques
reveal which specific parts of the brain are active during the
performance of a mental or physical task. If, in many individuals,
the same specific areas light up during the performance of the same
task, it indicates a module or modules at work. Some other
information sources that scientists in a variety of specialties use
to investigate the functioning of the brains mental organs are:
Observed effects of abnormalities in specific genes that implicate
certain modules, such as the FOXP2 gene and language (discussed a
bit later in this section) Observed effects of taking drugs that
act on specific modules Optical and aural illusions that trigger
conflicts between modules Studies of behaviour and abilities of
newborns and pre-lingual infants particularly useful in revealing
the inborn, adaptive aspects of music Comparativestudiesofidentical
twins,fraternaltwins,biological siblings,and adopted siblings Human
behaviour studies that control for cultural variables
(psychological experimentation) Findings from palaeontologye.g.,
discovery of a 44,000-year-old bone flute at a Neanderthal site,
indicating they had similar mental functioning in music as humans
Findings from archaeology Studies of behaviour and learning in
animals, especially our close primate cousins such as chimpanzees,
bonobos, gorillas, gibbons Genome datae. g., chimpanzees, bonobos,
and humans share more than 98% of the same genetic material
32. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 21 The human brain took millions of years to evolve into an
incredibly complex, powerful thingofbeauty.Dissecting acadavers
brainprovidesnoinformation about the workings of the living,
functioning brain. And neurosurgeons cannot open up skulls of
living humans simply to poke, prod, and probe through all the
billions of tangled microscopic neurons, to see how everything
works. So evolutionary psychologists and biologists can and do use
data from the sources listed above to, in effect, reverse engineer
the brain as best they can. MYTH OF 10% USE OF THE BRAINMYTH OF 10%
USE OF THE BRAINMYTH OF 10% USE OF THE BRAINMYTH OF 10% USE OF THE
BRAIN Perhaps the source of this myth is that, at any given moment,
you only use a fraction of your entire brain. But throughout the
day, you do use all of it. If youre sitting down, you dont need to
use the modules required to get you walking or running. If youre in
a quiet room reading a book, you dont need to use your
music-processing modules. Your brain functions pretty efficiently.
So you dont require the use of every module in your brain at every
moment. Think of driving a car. You dont use your cars accelerator
at every moment, nor the brakes, horn, radio, signal lights (some
drivers never use them!), and so on. You dont use all of your brain
all of the time, but you certainly do need all of the modules in
your brain. You do use all of them. Otherwise, they would not have
evolved in the first place. Brain modules are adaptationsnecessary
units of biological functionthat evolve in response to selective
pressure. 1.3.5 WHERE IN THE BRAIN? MUSIC MODULES IN INFANTS If
music were not a true adaptation, it would have had to have arisen
only recently. However, the evidence indicates music probably
predates our own species, Homo sapiens. That is, other hominid
species, now extinct, such as Homo neanderthalensis, had
music.
33. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!22 As well, neurological evidence
supports the hypothesis that modules for creating and processing
music exist in the brain at birth. Settingasidelyrics
forthemomentandconsideringmusic only,mostpeoplethink of the
melodythe tuneas the essence of a piece of music. Harmony without
melody or rhythm just doesnt work. Rhythm without melody or harmony
gets tiresome after a while due to something called habituation
(discussed in later chapters). Butyoucancreatepalatablemusic with
melodyonlyno harmonyorregular beat (e. g., background music in film
and television). Infants perceive melodic patterns much as adults
do. They respond to changes in melodic contour and changes in key
like adults do, indicating genetic origins. Newborns have pre-wired
neuronal circuitry to perceive the following (if youre not familiar
with some of the musical terminology below, all will be revealed in
the next few chapters): Melodic contour in both music and speech
Consonant intervals (Chapter 4 goes into detail about intervals)
Rhythmic patterns in both music and speech Pre-lingual infants in
all cultures can: Recognize changes in a melody Resolve tiny pitch
differences (and small timing differences) Recognize the same
melody even if sped up or slowed down Recognize the same melody
when transposed to a different key Perceive diatonic tunes more
easily than non-diatonic tunes Perceive consonant intervals more
easily than dissonant intervals Respond to their mothers melodious,
song-like vocalizing to a much greater degree than their mothers
speech vocalizing Adapt to the musical conventions of whatever
society theyre born into
34. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 23 Culture modifies the expression of these predispositions,
but the predispositions exist in the brain at birth (characteristic
of adaptations). Babiesworldwidespontaneouslyinitiatemusical
sound-play. Young childrenare forever inventing games and rhythmic
play. Adults do not teach them this stuff. In fact, children have
difficulty separating rhythmic body movements from music and
singing until age four or five. Next time you observe a preschooler
having a musical experience, notice how he or she jumps around,
claps and makes other rhythmic gestures. 1.3.6 WHERE IN THE BRAIN?
MODULARITY AND UNIVERSAL MUSICAL GRAMMAR Music can best be
understood as a system of relationships between tones, just as
language is a system of relationships between words. ANTHONY STORR
Groups of inter-connected modules for processing music probably
developed independently over time. Separate sub-modules likely
process tone duration, pitch, loudness, and timbre. Interestingly,
lesion studies indicate that separate modules even process the
closely-related elements, meter and rhythm. Pitch patterns that
group hierarchically (discussed in Chapter 8) appear to form the
basis of musical syntax (set of musically grammatical rules). Our
brains have a genetically determined ability to create, learn, and
process language, called Universal Grammar, one of Noam Chomskys
seminal discoveries in linguistics. It appears that our brains also
have a genetically determined specialization for music. Fred
Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, who co- authored aclassic bookon the
subject, labelled it Universal Musical Grammar. They were inspired
to a degree by the Polish music theorist Heinrich Schenker.
However, just as people learn a specific language in childhood and
dont understand other languages without learning them, so people
learn specific musical styles of their culture and dont understand
the musical styles of other cultures without learning them. On the
other hand, musical universals bespeak the genetic underpinnings of
all music (musical universals are listed a bit later). If you make
music that breaks the brains inborn rules, regardless of culture,
the music you make will likely not appeal to more than a handful of
humans. If you play recordings of bird songs of different species
to young songbirds raised in captivity, they will only learn the
songs of their own species, evidence of genetic origins. Blackbirds
in captivity, no matter how much loving care andpatient
training
35. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!24 they receive, stubbornly refuse
to learn the Lennon-McCartney tune Blackbird, because a blackbird
did not write the song. The same appears to apply to human infants.
Human babies recognize and learn speech and melodies characteristic
of the human species, rather than a particular culture. If you
learn two languages in childhood, youll learn both effortlessly and
speak both without an accent as an adult. But if you learn one
language in childhood and a second language as an adult, you will
learn the first language effortlessly and speak it without an
accent, and the second only with considerable effort, and speak it
with an accent. Since all of the worlds musics share a set of
universals, like languages, its likely that this phenomenon applies
to musical cultures. Suppose you have grown up learning the tonal
system of the West, with little exposure to the tonal system of,
say, India. And suppose, as an adult, you decide to move to India
and learn to play the sitar.Youll
probablyfindyourselfexpendingconsiderableefforttolearnwhatyoung
Indian sitar players seem to learn effortlessly. And, after some
years of training, you will likely play the instrument with an
accent, so to speak, compared with native- born players of your age
and musical experience. (Try it!) 1.3.7 WHERE IN THE BRAIN?
LATERALIZATION IN ANIMALS AND HUMANS Brain lateralization refers to
the location of neuronal circuitry for specific skills and
behaviours in either the left or the right hemisphere of the brain.
Handedness reveals brain lateralization, or lack of it, in a clear
way. In most species, handedness favouring the right or left hand,
hoof, wing, pawis non-committal. For example, youll find left- and
right-handedness equally distributed in chimpanzees and other apes.
A few animals other than humans have pronounced handedness, such as
the walrus, of all creatures. Humans manifest extremely specialized
right-handedness, reflecting the importance of left-brain
sequencing and left-brain language adaptations. Humans probably
communicated symbolically with hand gestures before, and during the
process of, converting to symbolic spoken language. Brain
lateralization in humans may have resulted from growing numbers and
complexities of modular specializations competing for space as the
brain swelled in size in response to selective pressure to cope
with larger and more complex human social organization. Something
related to the social nature of humans drove the huge expansion of
the brain. It could well have been either music or language. The
left hemisphere tries to solve problems and processes sequential
patterns, including language and rhythm. Its also active in
positive emotional processing.
36. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 25 The right hemisphere has modules for, among other things,
spatial cognition and the interpretation of harmony. WHY MOM HOLDS
BABY ON THE LEFTWHY MOM HOLDS BABY ON THE LEFTWHY MOM HOLDS BABY ON
THE LEFTWHY MOM HOLDS BABY ON THE LEFT Why does Mom hold baby with
babys head on Moms left side? Its not because of a connection the
baby feels with Moms heartbeat. And it also has nothing to do with
right-handedness versus left-handedness. Left-handed mothers also
tend to hold their babies on the left. It has to do with brain
specialization for emotional processing. As you know, the brains
right hemisphere connects to left body functions, and vice-versa.
The right hemisphere is active in negative-emotion processing
(fear, sadness). So the right hemisphere of Moms brain (and Dads
brain, too), wired to her left field of vision and hearing, can
more sensitively attune to her infants negative emotional signals,
enabling Mom to take action accordingly. Baby cant talk yet, so
mother-child communication is necessarily completely emotional. By
the way, this is why, when youre talking to someone, you look at
their right eye (your left field of vision), not their left eye.
The brain has roughly 10 billion neurons (nerve cells). Although
women have smaller brains than men, womens brains have
significantly more neurons per unit ofcortexthan mens brains (up to
12% more). And womens brains havea somewhat different
organizational architecture than mens brains. In any case, sheer
brain size doesnt seem tomattermuch in humans.AlbertEinsteins
brainweighedless than the average adult male brain. The overall
architecture of your brain mimics the architecture of the rest of
your body: a mirror-image pair of everything on each side, but only
one of the things in the middle. You have one corpus callosum, the
main bundle of nerves (there are others) that connects the left and
right hemispheres. If youre a woman, your corpus callosum is quite
a bit larger than it is in the brain of a man. This may account for
the superior ability of women to reconcile conflicting left-right
brain analyses of situations. The female brain is significantly
less lateralized than the male brain. Functional modules are more
globally distributed. Female and male humans have different
attitudes and behave differently because of differences in evolved
brain functions, wired-in from birth (more on this later in the
chapter). Apparently, this fact still stirs controversy.
37. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!26 1.3.8 WHERE IN THE BRAIN?
LATERALIZATION AND MUSIC The common belief that the right
hemisphere processes music and the left processes language does not
hold up. If Doc Yada-Yadams, a fully qualified neurosurgeon, were
to sedate the left hemisphere of your brain (dont try this at
home), you would likely be able to sing a song (i.e., melody with
words), but would not be able to speak. If the Doc sedated your
right hemisphere, you would be able to speak, but not sing.
Language and music time-share many characteristics in both
hemispheres. Singing tends to be more right-hemisphere, with speech
more left-hemisphere. Both the left and right hemispheres appear to
process pitch intervals. Most people have a preferred listening
ear, usually the right ear, which is connected to the
speech-processing left hemisphere. When you answer the phone, you
usually use your right ear. In male musicians, music shows much
more lateralized processing in the brain, compared with female
musicians. As for modularity,whethertheyrein theright,left,orboth
hemispheres, separate modules apparently process the time-based
elements of music (meter, rhythm), compared with the melodic
elements (pitch, intervals). No one knows exactly how many modules
do the work. Professional musicians show left-hemisphere dominance
for music, amateurs right-hemisphere, probably because trained
musicians approach music more analytically. As well, highly skilled
musicians appear to use a significantly larger proportion of the
brain in processing music than do people who listen to music but
dont play. In broad terms, the evidence on brain lateralization in
music processing indicates the following (Table 1):
38. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 27 TABLE 1TABLE 1TABLE 1TABLE 1 Brain Lateralization In Music
ProcessingBrain Lateralization In Music ProcessingBrain
Lateralization In Music ProcessingBrain Lateralization In Music
Processing Left hemisphere (connected to right ear and right side
of body) processes: Time-based elements of music (rhythm) using
sequence- processing modules Rhythmic aspects of melody
Rapidly-changing information such as speechsequences of words.
Right hemisphere (connected to left ear and left side of body)
processes: Pitch-based elements such as the shape of a melody
(melodic contour) and tonal patterns Harmony; the right hemisphere
is better at spatial cognition; in a sense, the right hemisphere
processes pitch and harmony as spatial elements of sound The
emotional tone of voice (via the left ear, which is connected to
the right hemisphere) better than the left hemisphere Brain
Lateralization and Music Mixing Record producers and recording
engineers, if they know what theyre doing, take into account brain
lateralization in producing a stereo mix: Rhythm-heavytracks
soundmorenatural ifbiassed alittle to the rightspeaker (right ear;
left brain hemisphere). Harmony-rich tracks sound better if biassed
a little to the left speaker (left ear; right brain hemisphere).
Tracks requiring both melodic and rhythmic processing, such as lead
vocals (including rapping, which has a lot of melodic content),
sound better in the middle. If lyric intelligibility is a problem,
right-speaker bias may help, as the right ear is connected to the
speech- and sequence-processing left hemisphere.
39. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!28 1.3.9 WHERE IN THE BRAIN? AMUSIA
Some may say that I couldnt sing, but no one can say that I didnt
sing FLORENCE FOSTER JENKINS, arguably one of the worlds worst
singers Amusia is the scientific term for what most people call
tone deafness and other musical brain disorders. It refers to any
of several disorders that result in loss of ability to create
music, or to perceive and understand music (or both).
Sometimesbraintraumacausesamusia.Sometimesdiseasetriggersit.Sometimes
its congenital. If you have congenital amusia, youre born without
the normal brain wiring to process pitch and rhythm. Consequently
you cant sing in tune or tap in time with a steady beat (you cant
entrain). Amusia is not common; it is believed to affect only about
5% of the population. Florence Foster Jenkins may have had
congenital amusia. Stroke victims develop acquired or receptive
amusia if they suffer brain damage to modules that process music.
If you develop amusia this way, you can recognize the lyrics of a
song you had known before you acquired amusiabut only when somebody
speaks the lyrics to you. If they sing the lyrics, you can no
longer recognize the tune. You have a hard time grasping or
perceiving music. You cant follow a melody,
identifythesoundsofvarious musical instruments, or
makesenseofchords. Expressive amusia refers to the inability to
create music by singing in tune, or entrain to an external source
of music by tapping in time. However, if you have expressive
amusia, you can usually still enjoy and understand music, and even
remember tunes. 1.3.10 WHERE IN THE BRAIN? MODULARITY AND UNIVERSAL
LINGUISTIC GRAMMAR The ability to acquire and use language is a
species-specific human activity. NOAM CHOMSKY Since this book deals
with lyrics (Chapter 10) as well as music, its fitting right about
now to have a quick look at the whereabouts and identity of
language in the brain. In the 1950s, the American linguist Noam
Chomsky proposed that language was located as a module or system of
modules in the brain. Turns out he was right. His work was a
turning point in the cognitive revolution and the downfall of
behaviourism, the doctrine that humans have blank-slate brains at
birth.
40. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 29 According to Chomsky, a generative grammara set of language
rulesis encoded in theneuronal architectureof the brain, and is
presentat birth. Brain wiring
forgenerativegrammarmakesitpossibleforyoung childrentoautomatically
become fluent in any language they are exposed to, effortlessly,
and without the need for adult teaching. Literacy has nothing to do
with language learning. Illiterate people worldwide have no
difficulty communicating orally at the same grammatical level as
those around them. If you were born in Dodge City but raised from
infancy in the Canadian Arctic, you would grow up speaking
Inuktitut. If you were born an Inuit in the far north but
raisedfrominfancyinDodge,youwouldspeakEnglish,grow luxuriant
flowing hair, and sing Classic Western songs about lost love and
horses. With a Kansas accent. Unlike your vocabulary, you dont have
to learn your mental grammar, as its called. You were born with it.
Thats why, long before you started school, you already knew the
difference between, Mommy plays the piano, and The piano plays
Mommy, even though both sentences use the same four words.
Universal Grammar means your brain automatically rejects patterns
such as these: Plays piano the Mommy Piano the Mommy plays The
plays Mommy piano Piano Mommy plays the and so on. Your brain has
evolved the miraculous capacity to automatically distinguish a
thing (noun) from an action (verb) from a qualifier (adjective,
adverb, determiner). So, even if you never go to school and learn
so-called proper grammar, youwill
speakingrammaticallycorrectsentences, indistinguishablefrom the
sentences spoken by others in your society who have had the benefit
of a formal education. Proper grammar is built into your brain.
Chomskys generative grammar theory has had an enormous impact in
all of the cognitive sciences (i.e., sciences concerned with
perception, intelligence, learning, and other aspects of mental
function), not just the specialties relating to language.
Scientists have since discovered many other modular adaptations
throughout the brain. Every language in the world has the same
design features. That is, although languages seem to have
completely different syntaxes (grammatical rules), close analysis
shows that all languages share the same deep structure. For
example, all languages have verbs and nouns and either a
subject-object or object-subject order. Since people of many
cultures create languages independently, this means the capacity
for acquiring and using language must have a genetic basis.
Language appears to have its own neural architecture, or set of
modules and sub-modules. These modules operate independently of
other cognitive functions such as perception, reasoning, and
knowledge-acquisition.
41. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!30 The brain has the innate capacity
to easily store words and their meanings, as well as the rules or
patterns that recognize word types and word orders (I. e.,
grammar).Ourmental dictionaryandourmental
grammar,whileindependent,work together in the parallel-processing
neural organ of computation that is the human brain. Dramatic
evidence supporting the theory that the ability to create language
from scratch is pre-wired in the brain at birth comes from studies
of two sign languages in widely separated populations of deaf
people, one in Israel, the other in Nicaragua. In thesetwo
populations, people creatednew languages from scratch,languages
that could not possibly have been transmitted culturally. Linguists
discovered that both languages function bythesame grammatical
rulesaslanguagesworldwide. Theonly difference is the channel of
transmission of meaningvia signing instead of speaking. Although
selective pressure drove evolution of the brain adaptation for
spoken language, which all humans use today, the same does not
apply to written language, which only some humans have. To acquire
written language, you have to learn it, because its a technological
development, not an adaptation. (Written language emerged from
idiographic representations of spoken language.) THE STROOP EFFECT:
MODULES IN CONFLICTTHE STROOP EFFECT: MODULES IN CONFLICTTHE STROOP
EFFECT: MODULES IN CONFLICTTHE STROOP EFFECT: MODULES IN CONFLICT
Your brains many modules are specialized to perform different
tasks. The Stroop effect demonstrates how the information arising
from the processing of different modules can cause interference.
Here are 25 words. Time yourself reading the words aloud, left to
right, line by line, without errors: grey, black, white, etc. Now
time yourself reading the COLOR of each of the 25 words aloud, left
to right, line by line. For example, the first three
42. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 31 words would be black, white, grey. Not so easy this timeit
takes considerably longer. How come? The American psychologist John
Ridley Stroop devised this test in the 1930s to demonstrate the
interference effect your brain experiences when linguistic
information conflicts with information from other senses. When you
ignore color and simply read the words, you only need to use your
language processing system, so its easy to say each word aloud. But
when you try to say the color of each word, your brains executive
system discerns a conflict between what your color processing
modules are telling you and what your language processing modules
are telling you about the meanings of the words associated with the
colors. Two different kinds of information are entangled. To sort
out the conflicting information, you have to first suppress the
meaning of each word normally associated with the sequence of
letters. This takes some effort. Then you have to translate the
color of each group of letters into the word with the meaning that
matches the color. Only then can you say the correct word. Primates
such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos do not develop any kind
of language-like communication system in the wild. They lack the
language brain modules that humans are born with. However, in
captivity, with much time and effort, trainers can get them to
understand, in a rudimentary way, that arbitrary symbols represent
objects. Apes can also learn elementary grammar-like rules, such as
linking two symbols representing something different from either of
the individual symbols. With about 30 years of patient training, a
great ape can memorize a couple of hundred word meanings, and can
almost acquire the language understanding of an 18-month-old human
child. Bonobos fare somewhat better at language learning than
chimpanzees. 1.3.11 WHERE IN THE BRAIN? FOXP2 AND MYH16 In 1990,
Steven Pinker hypothesized that language evolved in humans by
conventional Darwinian natural selection (Section 1.5 discusses
natural selection). Chomsky, who first described brain-based
universal grammar, did not go that far.
43. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!32 Twelve years later, in 2002, a
team of German and British geneticists published genetic evidence
strongly supporting Pinker. They discovered that a particular gene,
FOXP2, plays a vital role in processing speech and grammar. FOXP2
exists in other primates such as the chimpanzee, but the human form
of the gene differs. The human form may have appeared 100,000 to
200,000 years ago. Communication by language gradually replaced
communication by gesture. Language was the breakthrough technology
that resulted in symbolic thinking and the cultural explosion that
defines what it is to be human. If you happen to be born with
abnormal human FOXP2, you will suffer from severe language
impairment. That means that the normal human form is a naturally
selected mutation, a target of natural selection. (A mutation is a
randomly occurring change in the gene, resulting in a change in
physiology oranatomy or even behaviour.) And that strongly
indicates that the innate human capacity for effortless language
learning is an adaptation, the product of Darwinian natural
selection. Abouttwomillionyears ago, the hominid brain suddenly(in
glacial evolutionary terms) began to get larger and larger, a
process called encephalation. This did not occur in any of the
other large primates, such as chimpanzees and gorillas. A mutation
occurred in hominids around that time, a mutation that may have
made encephalation possible. A genecalledMYH16,
activeinchimpanzees, ensureshugejawmusclebuild-up, necessary for
powerful chewing. These muscles constrict the skull, something like
bungee cords, preventing growth in cranial capacity. In hominids, a
mutation appeared line that deactivated MYH16. This may have freed
the hominid skull to expand. And expand it did, tripling in size
over the next 2 million years. To this day, chimpanzees still
havetheactive version of MYH16 and comparativelysmall skulls. All
humans have the deactivated human mutation of MYH16 and
comparatively huge skulls. As well, theres evidence of a connection
between MYH16 and FOXP2. It turns out that if you have abnormal
human FOXP2, you not only have grave cognitive language
difficulties, but you also have physical problems with your mouth
and jaw muscles. Taken together, the uniquely human variants of
MYH16 and FOXP2 look like smoking-gun mutations with respect to
encephalation and language development. 1.3.12 WHERE IN THE BRAIN?
APHASIA Aphasia is the language equivalent of amusia, discussed a
bit earlier. Aphasia refers to any of several disorders that result
in loss of ability to communicate in speech or writing (or both).
There are two main types:
44. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 33 1. Brocas Aphasia (also called expressive aphasia): If you
have a stroke or otherwise suffer damage to a specific area of the
left hemisphere called Brocasarea,you will
havedifficultyspeaking.However, the content of what youre saying,
slow and disjointed as it may come out, will make sense.
Interestingly, if you have Brocas aphasia, you will have great
difficulty reciting or speaking the words of a song you had learned
before developing aphasia, but will usually be able to sing the
words fluently. 2. Wernickes Aphasia (also called fluent aphasia):
If you have a stroke or otherwise suffer damage to an area of the
left hemisphere called Wernickes area, you will be able to speak
fluently, but the content of what youre saying will not make sense.
Numerous politicians, some defence attorneys, Ann Coulter,
television evangelists, many advertising copywriters, talk radio
hosts, and talk radio callers appear to suffer from Wernickes
aphasia. 1.3.13 THE COMBINATORIAL NATURE OF MUSIC AND LANGUAGE
Chomsky pointed out the following: Pretty much every sentence that
everyone utters is a different combination of words, never heard
before. That means its impossible to store all sentences in the
brain. That means the brain must have a mechanism for putting words
together in a meaningful way. That means the brain can tell the
difference between a group of words that makes sense, and a group
of words that pickles without lamented occidental Custers
stapler.
45. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!34 Heres how Steven Pinker describes
the combinatorial nature of the brains language module: A finite
number of discrete elements (in this case, words) are sampled,
combined, and permuted to create larger structures (in this case,
sentences) with properties that are quite distinct from those of
their elements. For example, the meaning of Man bites dog is
different from the meaning of the same words combined in reverse
order. Itspossible,therefore,toconstruct apractically
infinitenumberofsentenceswith a relatively limited vocabulary. The
same applies to music: A scale has a finite number of different
pitches. Each pitch can last for a finite number of different time
values. Each pitch can be combined with a finite number of other
pitches to create a finite number of intervals and chords. And so
on. Even though each type of musical property (melody, harmony,
rhythm) has a finite number of elements, when you multiply out all
the possibilities, you get a practically infinite number of
possible tunes a songwriter could write. Thats what combinatorial
means. Chomskys universal generative linguistic grammar describes
the brains ability to compile an inventory of words and apply a set
of combinatorial rules. Lerdahl and Jackendoffsuniversal
generativemusical grammardescribesthe brains ability to compile an
inventory of tones and apply a set of combinatorial rules. The
whole human brain is a combinatorial system, a parallel-processing
neural organ of computation. Using mentalese (described below), a
discrete number of mental symbols can be combined and recombined,
using as many modules and sub- modules as necessary. In other
words, humans have the ability to think up, or imagine, an almost
infinite number of possibilities, because thought is itself
combinatorial. Thats why behaviour is infinitely variable. Both
music and language use small numbers of elements to generate an
infinite number of combinations of word phrases and musical
phrases. Therefore, its likely that the brain function of
combinatoriality evolved before the evolution of separate music and
language specialties.
46. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 35 THE GENETIC CODE IS LIKE LANGUAGETHE GENETIC CODE IS LIKE
LANGUAGETHE GENETIC CODE IS LIKE LANGUAGETHE GENETIC CODE IS LIKE
LANGUAGE The genetic code, like language, is combinatorial. Thats
why every bacterium, plant and creature is genetically different,
even within the same species, and even though each uses the same 64
three-letter DNA words. Here are some analogies between language
and the genetic code: Language Genetic Code LETTERS 26 letters
(symbols), A, B, C, etc. NUCLEOTIDES 4 nucleotides: cytosine,
guanine, adenine, and thymine WORDS A word consists of one or more
letters. Thousands of words are in a dictionary. Speech and written
documents are comprised of words from the dictionary. CODONS A
codon consists of three adjacent nucleotides. 64 codons form the
genetic dictionary. All living things use the same 64-codon
dictionary. SENTENCES Sequences of words are called sentences or
lines of poetry, etc. They code meaningful representations of
thought. GENES Sequences of codonsstrands of DNAare called genes.
They code chains of amino acid molecules called proteins, which
comprise various body parts. CHAPTERS Many sentences form a larger
unit called a chapter. CHROMOSOMES Many genes form a long strand of
DNA called a chromosome.
47. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!36 BOOK All of the chapters
containing all of the sentences form a bookperhaps 10,000
sentences. GENOME All of the chromosomes, containing all of the
genes, form the genome of the organism. Humans have 23 pairs of
chromosomes, one member of each pair from each parent. The human
genome consists of some 20,000 to 25,000 genes. The fact that all
life on earth is based on the same 64-codon DNA dictionary makes it
a virtual certainty that all life, all microbes, plants, and
animals that have ever existeddinosaurs, oysters, apple trees,
sharks, daffodils, rats, chimpanzees, and humansevolved from the
same single molecular strand, a monad (first simple organism) that
fused, through natural chemical mechanisms, from non-living
molecules nearly 4 billion years ago. 1.3.14 HOW PLASTIC IS YOUR
BRAIN? The human brain exhibits some degree of plasticity. For
example, a young child who trains as a pianist experiences some
modification in the cortex as a result of that musical training.
While your brain is in some measure, adapted to adapt, plasticity
does not mean your brain consists of a lot of generalized matter
that can do pretty much anything. Plasticity simply means a module
can take on some functioning for which it was not specifically
adapted, provided that functioning relates to what the module would
ordinarily do. Cross-modal plasticity refers to the ability of your
brains modules to reorganize themselves somewhat to take advantage
of cortical modules not being used due to sensory loss. Forexample,
loss orabsenceofvision can stimulate some brain module
reorganization, enhancing a blind persons sense of pitch and
direction. Blind individuals often have extraordinary musical
skills. The effect of plasticity is much more evident in childhood.
In blind people, pitch discrimination (the ability to judge the
direction of extremely rapid pitch change) is much keener than in
sighted people, especially if the individual became blind before
the age of two. Its easier to learn to playa musical instrument or
to speak more than onelanguageinchildhoodbecause thebrain
isreceptive toapplyingitsbuilt-in music
48. CHAPTER 1WHAT MUSIC REALLY IS, WHO MAKES IT, WHERE, WHEN,
WHY 37 and language processing modules to any language and any
musical culture during childhood. After a period of time, called
the critical period, plasticity diminishes sharply as
thevariousmodulesbecomefullyfunctional. If you dontlearn early,
your brain is pre-wired to move on to the next stage, and you lose
the window of opportunity. 1.3.15 MENTALESE: THINKING WITHOUT
LANGUAGE Contrary to popular mythology, thelanguageyou speakdoes
not mouldorshape the way you think.An Arabic-speaking
person,forexample,doesnotthinkdifferently from the way an
English-speaking person thinks. You do not even need language to
think. Humans (and other animals) use a brain language, the
language of thought, usually called mentalese. If thoughts depended
on words, nobody would be able to translate anything from one
language to another. The words of the French language do not all
have exact equivalents in, say, English. The translation, then, is
thoughtfor thought, not word for word. The translator uses
mentalese to make decisions on how to structure the thoughts across
the languages. You, like everybody, sometimes have problems putting
thoughts into words. Thats not because your thoughts dont exist; of
course they do. Putting them into words means translating mentalese
into language. That can be a chore. When you finish reading this
chapter of this book, you might remember only one or two of the
specific sentences. But that does not mean you will have forgotten
the content of the chapter (unless you havent been paying
attention). What you will remember is the gist of this chapter. You
will easily be able give your friends a fairly detailed oral
summary of the chapter (and urge them in the strongest possible
terms to buy this interesting and highly informative book), but you
will not likely use any of the exact sentences you read in this
chapter, because you wont remember them. You will remember the gist
of this chapter in mentalese, the language of thought. The same
applies to other experiences you have, such as seeing a movie or
attending a party. Not only do you absorb the gist of the story
line as revealed in the dialogue of the movie (or conversations you
had at the party), but you also remember information that other
modules have captured during the experience, such as the visual and
auditory elements. Later, you can describe not only the gist of the
dialogue, but also the gist of the visual setting, the soundscape,
and how the experience made you feel emotionally. Mentalese
captures the gist of all of this. You dont store all of it
permanently, of course; memories fade over time. Chapter 7
discusses the various types and functions of memory. Similarly, you
can identify a familiar piece of music, even though you hear it in
a completely transformed arrangement, played with unfamiliar
instruments. You
49. HOW MUSIC REALLY WORKS!38 recognize the unfamiliar
rendition because you retain the gist of it. For example, you can
recognize My Favourite Things from The Sound of Music even if its
played in a jazz arrangement youve never heard before. By John
Coltrane. Humans,of all theanimal species on this